The unusually-hued crustaceans ended up at three stores in New York: Guilderland, Middletown, and Binghamton. The lobsters will be held in the stores until later this week, when the company says they'll be sent to aquariums. (Somewhere an Albany Aquarium proponent is sighing at the missed opportunity.)

Price Chopper gets its lobsters from Canada, via a Cape Cod-based company called, appropriately, Lobster Trap. A PC spokesperson tells us that the company's VP of seafood merchandising has never seen an orange lobster in his 17 years with the supermarket chain -- and their contact at the Lobster Trap has only seen one in 33 years.

Lobsters are typically a mottled brown/green color. Exceptions -- whether they're orange or blue or some other color -- were considered extraordinarily rare. But that doesn't seem to be the case lately -- the AP reported last year that the number of unusually colored lobsters appears to be on a noticeable upswing, though nobody's really sure exactly why. Theories range from increased natural variation, to bigger lobster harvests, to increased opportunities for reporting (mobile phone cameras + Twitter). Just this last month there were 35 orange lobsters in a catch from Nova Scotia. [CBC] [AP/CS Monitor] [Wikipedia] [CBC]

Maybe the strangest of the recently strange lobsters: a half black/half orange "Halloween" lobster that turned up in Salem, Massachusetts last October. The color divide is bilateral and is so sharp that it looks fake. [New England Aquarium]

The different colors are caused by genetic quirks, but the lobsters are apparently normal in every other way -- including taste. Though most of the media reports about the unusual lobsters mention that they're being diverted from the boiling pot. [NatGeo]

Comments

"True red lobstersâ€”not just ones that turn red when cookedâ€”are a one-in-ten-million find." And Price Chopper recently received THREE? Hmmm.....And just LOOK at what's happening to the aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico! Fascinating! I'm sure aquariums all over the world are lining up to get their hands on some of these "genetically mutated" babies!

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